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Thanks so much.

This is our body politic.

I'm the creator and host, Farai Chidea.

This week we're talking about voting rights, racism, and public policy, and one woman's battle with COVID-19.

Heather McGee spent years as an economic policy Wong and was president of Demos from 2014 to 2018,

transforming it into a think tank that describes its work as race forward.

She just published her book The Sum of Us,

What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.

In it, she set out to analyze why white Americans believe in a zero-sum racial competition.

That's the idea that progress for people of color comes at the expense of white people.

And she uses social science research to show that this belief harms everyone. Heather, it's

great to have you on Our Body Politics. It's so great to be with you. Tell us about the time that

you write about in the book where you're 25 and you have a sort of, you know, moment where the

race class narrative clicks in for you.

So I spent nearly 20 years helping to build and then being president of for four years

...